THEATER PREVIEW: 'Fun Home' explores secrets and struggles

At the start of the musical “Fun Home,” the narrator tells the audience the startling truth about her life.

By Jody Feinberg/The Patriot Ledger

At the start of the musical “Fun Home,” the narrator tells the audience the startling truth about her life.

“Dad and I both grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town. And he was gay, and I was gay, and he killed himself, and I became a lesbian cartoonist.”

It’s not just the family story that packs a punch, but the structure of the musical, which runs Oct. 17-29 at the Boston Opera House. Based on the 2006 best-selling graphic memoir by cartoonist Alison Bechdel about her relationship with her closeted gay father, it’s told through three actresses who portray Alison as a child, a college student and an adult.

Kate Shindle, a Broadway actress and former Miss America and who has been an AIDS activist and now is president of the Actors’ Equity Association, plays Alison.

“Mostly my role is to watch (my younger selves) and comment and try to figure out who my father was and if his death was my fault to some degree,” Shindle said. “The relentless search for the truth of what happened is the thing that drives me through the show.”

“Fun Home” won 2015 Tony Awards for best score by Jeanine Tesori, best book and lyric by Lisa Kron, and best direction, by Sam Gold. (Tesori’s other musicals include “Shrek the Musical,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “Caroline, or Change.”) The national tour began in October 2016 and recouped its production costs in May, proving that a potentially provocative controversial show about sexuality and suicide can have national success.

While those are the obvious themes, the show at heart is a memory journey about self-discovery and the complicated relationship between a strongly bonded father and daughter. It’s both painful and funny, as befits the subtitle of Bechdel’s memoir: “A Family Tragicomic.”

In the opening song, Alison and her father sing in unison what they want: “I can’t abide romantic notions of some vague long ago/ I want to know what is true/ Dig deep into who and what and why and when.” The music, which conveys so much of the emotion, has a contemporary feel with violin, guitar and beautiful melodies.

“The trick about talking about this show is that the subject matter is so intense that I always want to emphasize the light in the story,” Shindle said. “There’s plenty of really entertaining and funny stuff.”

That comes mostly from young Alison and her two brothers, who play Superman, imagine themselves the Partridge family, as they rough house in their home, which they’ve ironically called “fun home” as a nickname for the family’s funeral home business.

Her father, Bruce (played by Broadway actor Robert Petkoff) has a big personality, exuberant in his passion for home restoration and antique collecting, while teaching high school English. Yet, he is deeply troubled, hiding his sexuality and the young men he picks up.

In one of the show’s most poignant, and universal moments, college student Alison is riding in the car with her father and desperately wants to talk to him about her truth and his. Singing the song “Telephone Wire,” she says to herself: “Say something/ Talk to him/ Doesn’t matter what you say/ Just make the fear in his eyes go away/ I was like you dad, me too.”

“It’s intense, wanting with every fiber to talk about something and then trying to summon the courage,” Shindle said. “Nearly everybody who has a family has had a similar experience where there are things no one wants to talk about, but they need too.”

A day after this lost opportunity, Bruce kills himself at age 43.

“Alison came out and recognized her identity, and her dad never did,” Shindle said. “She spends a lot of time wondering if that triggered what happened to him.”

Equally moving is Alison’s mother Helen (played by Broadway actress Susan Moniz), who has long denied the reality, until she can’t anymore and admits that she has lived in a fraudulent marriage. In the song “Days and Days,” she sings “How did it all happen here?” and “And now my life is shattered and laid bare.” The lyric “Everything is balanced and serene/ Like chaos never happens if it’s never seen” is a refrain from the opening number.

And there’s humor in the music, when Alison falls in love for the first time in college and sings “Changing My Major,” where she imagines staying in bed and writing a thesis on her new girlfriend, Joan. In the song “Ring of Keys,” the young girl Alison experiences her first same-sex attraction when she is smitten at the sight of a delivery woman “an old school butch,” and in particular loves her keys.

Shindle said she has been pleased that audiences have filled theaters even in more conservative communities.

“It’s a deeply important conversation right now that people need to be free to live their own identity, and bad things can happen if they don’t feel that freedom,” Shindle said. “I specifically wanted to do this musical on the road because it brings that conversation around the country.”

Despite the show’s sadness, it feels hopeful by the end, Shindle said.

“Alison hasn’t been able to find all the answers, but she’s able to say there were really beautiful moments in her family and she remembers these,” Shindle said.

Jody Feinberg may be reached at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.FUN HOME Presented by Broadway in Boston at the Boston Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston, Oct. 17-29; $40-$220. 866-523-7469, broadway.boston.com

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